Ex-Apple engineer secures $5M funding for voice-only note-taking pendant

As AI models continue to improve voice-to-text technology, transcription and note-taking have become some of the most prominent use cases for wearable devices. The category is already beginning to split into different directions, with startups such as Plaud and Pocket focusing on products that can record and summarise meetings. Others, including Friend, Omi, and Amazon-owned Bee, are experimenting with form factors like pendants and wristbands to give users a way to record conversations and moments from their everyday lives.

That second approach has also sparked controversy, since many people are understandably uncomfortable with being recorded without their consent. A startup called Taya, founded by former Apple design engineer Elena Wagenmans, is trying to address those privacy concerns with a device that captures only the wearer's voice. The product also doubles as jewellery, designed as a pendant that can be worn as an accessory.

Available for preorder at $89, the Taya Necklace includes a button users can tap to start and stop recordings, while the microphone remains off by default. The startup also provides a companion iOS app that stores recorded notes and lets users ask questions about them via an AI-powered chat feature.

Unlike several older competitors that are built for a broad range of use cases, Taya is focused on ensuring the device records only the wearer's voice. During onboarding, the app asks users to provide a voice sample, which is then used during recording to prioritise that voice and reduce the capture of surrounding sounds and other speakers. The company said it is also experimenting with directional microphones to improve this capability further.

Taya said on Wednesday that it has raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by MaC Venture Capital and Female Founders Fund, with participation from a16z Speedrun.

Wagenmans launched the startup in 2024 together with Cinnamon Sipper and Amy Zhou, both of whom had also previously worked at Apple. Sipper and Zhou have since departed the company.

According to Wagenmans, the goal was to create an attractive wearable that works solely for the individual user, because concerns around social perception and privacy often discourage people from using these kinds of devices. In that way, the company's philosophy is similar to rivals such as Sandbar and Pebble, which are also trying to build more personal note-taking tools.

"We realised that there is a lot of utility that you can provide, being a single-player [gadget]. Essentially, we want to capture your voice, not the room that you're in or the other people," she said.

Wagenmans added that the startup is testing different ways to make note-taking more effortless for users, while also giving them clearer feedback from the pendant that a note has been successfully saved.

At present, the company has five full-time employees and several contractors, all of whom work in person at its San Francisco office.

Adrian Fenty, managing partner at MaC Venture Capital, said Taya's position as a privacy-first product that does not resemble a traditional gadget could help it grow beyond the earliest wave of adopters.

"We're excited about the category, but would actually place Taya outside of the notetaker bucket. Those products are ambient recorders; they capture meetings and conversations around you. Taya's intentional single-player capture is focused on you alone. We believe that Taya can be a company that aids human work and personal evolution, and helps humans to understand their own behaviour while making it more fun in the process," Fenty said.